swing the door wide [gen]

Dec 07, 2010 20:39

swing the door wide
963 words // pg-13 // gen
[prompt: hs_bingo - sharing a locker]
[a/n: ages have been manipulated for my own needs. as always, please forgive and enjoy!]


Pete Wentz is a strange guy. He's a senior, star of the soccer team, and an A student even though Ryan never sees him take any books home.

Pete is popular, of course, being King of Soccer, and ever since they started renovating the junior/senior halls, doubling up the students, there have been more people hanging out at Ryan's locker than ever before. It's not that Ryan doesn't have friends, okay? It's just that Pete is really freaking popular.

It's pissing Spencer off.

Spencer's kind of strange though. Most of the time he's fairly laid-back, going with the flow, but for certain thinks he likes routine. Ryan ignores the fact that when Spencer's usually being anal about something, it's because it affects Ryan. So the fact that Spencer's had to alter his routine to account for Pete's presence at Ryan's-their-locker has not made him very happy.

The first time, Ryan was able to grab up the little triangle of paper before Pete noticed. Ryan doesn't really have the same problems dropping notes in Spence's locker. He's got some strange junior whose name is Jared, but for some reason he insists on being called Barty or some shit. Anyway, he hardly comes to school and when he does, he spends the majority of the time in ISS.

So yeah, leaving notes for Spencer is easy.

Pete and his entourage usually go straight to lunch from fourth period and Ryan's across the school in Chem I, so Spencer generally drops his notes then. They've been doing well, or at least Ryan thinks so until he forgets his textbook one day. Rushing around the corner, he finds Pete with a crumpled piece of paper, standing in front of their locker.

Barely restraining himself from jerking the note out of Pete's hands, he asked tersely, "What are you doing?"

Pete looks up briefly and then back down at the paper in his hands. "Reading a note from your boyfriend."

Ryan can feel his face heating. Reaching out, he snatches the note away.

"One, fuck you. Two, he's my best friend, not my boyfriend. And three, that's private property. Just because I have to share my locker does not make you privy to my private life."

Pete raises an eyebrow. "Privy, huh. Big words impress all the teachers."

"Not everyone has a monkey brain," Ryan mutters unfairly, reaching in the locker to grab his Chemistry book.

"Actually," Pete leans a shoulder against the open locker door. "They kind of do. Evolution and all that jazz."

Ryan can feel his face heating up again. Looking down at the note in his hand, he mumbles, "You know what I meant."

Great. It's one of the notes where he'd scribbled some more lines for Spence to look at. Maybe Pete hadn't gotten that far.

To shut the locker, he has to reach past Pete's head, and since Pete's kind of a jackass, he doesn't really move until Ryan tugs at the locker door. Pete moves away, saunters a couple steps away, and then calls back over his shoulder, "Tell your boyfriend that we could always use a few new people on the soccer team next year."

Ryan snorts. Spencer and sports? Then Pete's words catch up to him

"He's not my boyfriend," Ryan growls. A couple of students look his way and he glares at them until they turn their heads and look away.

Pete just waves a hand over his shoulder and Ryan glares at his retreating figure.

It takes nearly a week for him to notice. Actually, he probably wouldn't have ever noticed, but Spencer says, "Has Wentz taken up residence in someone else's locker?"

"What?" Ryan's frowns down at his textbook, spread across the bedspread. He fucking hates science.

"Pete Wentz, senior soccer extraordinaire. Locker mate. Supposedly, anyway." Ryan finally looks up to see Spencer staring at him expectantly.

Shaking his head, Ryan says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Spencer rolls his eyes. "I haven't seen him hanging out with his crew at your locker lately. It's like he's being, I don't know, courteous or some shit."

Huh. Now that Ryan thinks about it, Spencer's right. Pete has been noticeably absent. "I don't know, dude." He looks back down at his textbook and sighs. Stupid chemistry.

"Oh my god," Spencer huffs. Pushing Ryan over he lays down and takes Ryan's pencil away from him. "It's stinkin' math, okay? Not hard at all. You just have to...."

Ryan doesn't think about it again for a couple of weeks, not until the next time he forgets his chemistry book. This time he remembers before he's all the way to class, so he's not in that big of a rush. He walks around the corner again and stops abruptly.

Pete's at his locker and Ryan's about to go over and rage at him for reading their notes again, but Pete frowns, running his finger over the bottom of the page.

He watches Pete carefully fold the note up again; Ryan would never have known he'd read it, not really. Pete turns and meets his eyes. They widen for a moment and then whatever embarrassment/chagrin on his face falls away, wiped clean in a matter of seconds. He gives Ryan a huge horse grin, a dorky thumbs-up, and then does that stupid swagger down the hallway. Ryan frowns, watching until the warning bell rings.

They don't talk about it, but two days later taped inside door to his locker, there's a small note.

I'm all ears and I'm all scars to hear you tell me-
"boy's like you,
you try too hard to look not quite as desperate".
I'm hanging on.

but I still know the way
to make your makeup run.

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fic band: p!atd, fic band: fob, fic challenge: hs bingo, fic type: gen, fic band: tyv

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